On Engineers

Engineering—that word always implies
engineers. In our case, the plural form of the word is appropriate.
We have mechanical engineers that design the cases that house our
systems (it's their job to ensure it takes at least half an hour to
figure out how to open up any new case). We have electrical
engineers that design faster, cheaper and better circuits, and we
have systems engineers that design our systems, at least the
software components thereof. I, however, want to suggest a new
category: bloatware engineer. It would be the bloatware engineer's
job to ensure that however much system you bought last week—say a
P-IV 1.8GHz system with 512MB RAM, water-cooled, super-charged,
over-clocked, speed demon—it would run like a 486-33 with only
16MB RAM.

My first nominations for this new category include the GNOME
and KDE Project leaders. Personally, I use Blackbox (starts in
about two seconds) and Sylpheed (starts almost instantaneously).
The worst offender I run is Netscape, but it's the only fully
CSS-2-compliant browser out there, and it's worse with the
CrossOver plugin. I might also nominate just about any office
suite, but bloat there is expected (although Applix always started
and ran like a rabbit on methedrine). One day I'm going to go back
and load a bunch of old software on a new system, just to see 1) if
it even runs and 2) just how fast.

But don't get me wrong. I personally can't wait to buy a
Cappuccino GG-1, the very small footprint computer available from
Think Geek
(thinkgeek.com), build a
battery, get one of those new “keyboards” that's projected in
front of you and senses where your fingers are and, finally, get
those lightweight goggles that are like having a 20“ screen. All
that's missing is a wireless card (need to swap out the Ethernet
connection in the Cappuccino for a wireless connection). Talk about
mobility in a three-pound package.

This is a small web script that takes an IP (your eth0
address by default) and plots it on a map of the world. The IP is
sent to NetGeo, which returns a latitude/longitude reading of your
supposed location. Overall, it's accurate but subject to
assumptions, one being that the location of the company the IP is
assigned to is the IP's ultimate geographic location. For example,
the geographic location of one of my servers here in Panama shows
up as in Texas. While my provider's parent is in Texas, and it's
been pretty hot and dry down here up until now, this definitely
isn't Texas. But it's fun anyway. Requires: web server with PHP and
GD, internet access (to access NetGeo site).

This is a top-like utility that watches your network
connections on whatever interface you tell it to listen (by
default, eth0). It runs on a VT (VC) or in an xterm window and
shows current connections. For a way to quickly monitor what's
being forwarded through your system in real time, this utility wins
hands down. Requires: libpthread, libm, glibc.

The Open Ticket Request System (OTRS) is a web-based
ticketing system that will take e-mail addressed to the OTRS user
and allow you to queue it for resolution. The system has a link for
a phone queue, but the ability wasn't yet available. This would,
however, allow you to track calls and e-mails from customers or
from systems sending you e-mails. The author has provided
capabilities to respond via e-mail, to keep internal or public
notes, etc. Requires: Perl; Perl modules: Unix::Syslog, CGI,
MIME::Words, Mail::Internet, MIME::Parser, DBI, DBD::mysql,
Digest::MD5; web server; SMTP (sendmail, etc.); procmail.

This application for teachers sports both a text interface
that is quick and easy to use, as well as a GUI interface. The GUI
uses Tk, so you'll need that installed, but it's even easier to use
than the text interface. While I didn't test it, if you're running
a web server on the same system OpenGrade is running on, you can
allow students password-protected access to their grades. Requires:
Perl; Tk; Perl modules: Term::ReadKey, Date::Calc, Tk::FileDialog,
Net::FTP.

Okay, everyone needs a laugh or two, and a lot of folks I
know open their local newspaper to the comic section first. With
dailystrips you can have your favorite web comics on one page
waiting for you when you arrive at your desk. Requires: Perl,
graphical web browser.

DACT is a dynamic adaptive compression tool that tries to
find the optimum compression for a file based on block sizes. It
also allows you to perform encryption on the file. Compression
algorithms depend on the compression libraries found on your
system, so not all compression algorithms will be available.
Requires: libdl, libbz2, libz, libm, glibc.

Well, this month's pick from this column three years ago was
just too easy. I have only one application I'm still using:
NetSaint. NetSaint has come a long way since I originally reported
on it. Installation is much easier, but unfortunately, while
configuration is not difficult, it's not easy either. Requires:
libm, glibc, web server, libgd (optional).

Until next month.

David
A. Bandel
(david@pananix.com)
is a Linux/UNIX consultant currently living in the Republic of
Panama. He is coauthor of Que Special Edition: Using Caldera
OpenLinux.